Rapa Nui, now known as Easter Island, is one of the most remote inhabited places in the world. Travel + Leisure India & South Asia’s contributor captures the eerie mood and the mystical stone heads that exemplify the region.
Rapa Nui in pictures
Easter island is located around 3,700 kilometers off the coast of Chile, in the southeast corner of the Polynesian triangle. Stretching 163 square kilometres in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the island enchants with its rolling hills and the wild horses that roam freely across them.
Fewer than 10,000 people live on this island made famous by its ancient moai statues scattered across Rapa Nui National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. These statues and the barren landscape along with its captivating history, have beguiled visitors for centuries. The moais are imposing monolithic human figures carved by ancient Polynesians between 1250-1500 AD as tombs to honour ancestral chiefs.
The inhabitants of Rapa Nui were skilled craftsmen, and carved these breathtaking statues from the volcano Rano Raraku. Moais from this volcano consist of tuff or compressed volcanic ash that was easy to carve. The figures can be anywhere between two and 20 feet high and weigh between 10 and 86 tons.
They have long sloping noses, sunken eyes, and prominent chins and brows. There are now an estimated 1,000 moais dotting the landscape. One of the greatest puzzles is how the people of Rapa Nui transported these enormous stone statues across large distances and placed them in various spots around the island.
This feat seems impossible at first glance. Archaeologists believe they were rolled on logs from one site to another. As you gaze at the land, it seems as though time stands still, and you wonder what extraordinary tales these stoic guardians have been witnesses to. If only stones could speak!
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